• (ReacTor) Five Stories About Time Travel on a Limited Scale

    From James Nicoll@21:1/5 to All on Mon Jun 9 12:45:30 2025
    Five Stories About Time Travel on a Limited Scale

    No rules, no bureaucracy, just some randos messing around with the
    past, present, and future.

    https://reactormag.com/five-stories-about-time-travel-on-a-limited-scale/ #ReacTor
    --
    My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
    My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
    My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
    My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

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  • From Paul S Person@21:1/5 to michael.stemper@gmail.com on Thu Jun 12 08:24:35 2025
    On Wed, 11 Jun 2025 14:32:26 -0500, "Michael F. Stemper" <michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:

    On 09/06/2025 19.06, Tony Nance wrote:
    On 6/9/25 12:45 PM, James Nicoll wrote:
    Five Stories About Time Travel on a Limited Scale

    No rules, no bureaucracy, just some randos messing around with the
    past, present, and future.

    https://reactormag.com/five-stories-about-time-travel-on-a-limited-scale/ >>> #ReacTor

    Interesting! I haven't read any of the five. I had not seen that particular cover of the Gerrold, either - sheesh.

    When I saw that cover in James' post, I thought that it was a misplaced >picture of Alex DeLarge. Does it relate to the story in any way? I haven't >read _Fondlded_ since 1997, so my detailed memory is lacking.

    The Time Machine - Wells

    This is the second classic Wells you've recently mentioned (the other one
    was _The War of the Worlds_), neither of which I've read. (I have seen the >George Pal interpretations of both, of course.) I need to fix this.

    Yes. You do.

    Although Pal's /War of the Worlds/ is well-done, it has a lot of
    high-level strategic stuff. The book is much closer to the ground. In
    fact, the 2005 version actually captures the spirit of the book much
    better: one man's desperate trip across an invaded landscape to find
    the one he loves during the route of mankind. OK, the goal in the 2005
    version is more to dump the kids off on the wife so he doesn't have to
    bother with them any more. But the basic story is the same. With Pal,
    that story is only a part of the film. Note that I say nothing about
    the Martian machines: Pal's are very modern, the 2005 version's are
    more like the book, but both work in the story just fine.

    Pal's version of /The Time Machine/ is -- awful. No, seriously, read
    the book and forget the film, if you can. (The main problem is that it
    is obsessed with Nuclear War which, of course, the book knows nothing
    of.)
    --
    "Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
    Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
    Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

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  • From James Nicoll@21:1/5 to Michael F. Stemper on Thu Jun 12 14:08:25 2025
    In article <102f41k$2qni2$1@dont-email.me>,
    Michael F. Stemper <michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 12/06/2025 10.24, Paul S Person wrote:
    On Wed, 11 Jun 2025 14:32:26 -0500, "Michael F. Stemper"
    <michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 09/06/2025 19.06, Tony Nance wrote:

    The Time Machine - Wells

    This is the second classic Wells you've recently mentioned (the other one >>> was _The War of the Worlds_), neither of which I've read. (I have seen the >>> George Pal interpretations of both, of course.) I need to fix this.

    Yes. You do.


    Pal's version of /The Time Machine/ is -- awful. No, seriously, read
    the book and forget the film, if you can. (The main problem is that it
    is obsessed with Nuclear War which, of course, the book knows nothing
    of.)

    Nuclear war? Wells didn't even know about the Blitz when he wrote it, or
    even WWI.

    Despite which War in the Air had some on point critiques of Victory
    Through Air Power.

    --
    My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
    My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
    My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
    My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

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  • From Paul S Person@21:1/5 to michael.stemper@gmail.com on Fri Jun 13 08:38:40 2025
    On Thu, 12 Jun 2025 12:50:44 -0500, "Michael F. Stemper" <michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:

    On 12/06/2025 10.24, Paul S Person wrote:
    On Wed, 11 Jun 2025 14:32:26 -0500, "Michael F. Stemper"
    <michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 09/06/2025 19.06, Tony Nance wrote:

    The Time Machine - Wells

    This is the second classic Wells you've recently mentioned (the other one >>> was _The War of the Worlds_), neither of which I've read. (I have seen the >>> George Pal interpretations of both, of course.) I need to fix this.

    Yes. You do.


    Pal's version of /The Time Machine/ is -- awful. No, seriously, read
    the book and forget the film, if you can. (The main problem is that it
    is obsessed with Nuclear War which, of course, the book knows nothing
    of.)

    Nuclear war? Wells didn't even know about the Blitz when he wrote it, or
    even WWI.

    Thanks for confirming my point.

    I didn't notice this when I saw it as a child, but the Eloi are lured
    into the Morloch domain /in the movie/ by the sound of an air raid
    siren and the opening of an air raid shelter's doors -- a siren we
    heard and a shelter we saw earlier in the film.

    The problem for me here isn't that they changed the book, the problem
    is that the changes are modern-day (well, "modern" when the film was
    made) concerns.

    Maltin, who likes the film, calls it a "cartoon version" of the book.
    --
    "Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
    Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
    Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul S Person@21:1/5 to Nicoll on Fri Jun 13 08:32:03 2025
    On Thu, 12 Jun 2025 14:08:25 -0400 (EDT), jdnicoll@panix.com (James
    Nicoll) wrote:

    In article <102f41k$2qni2$1@dont-email.me>,
    Michael F. Stemper <michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 12/06/2025 10.24, Paul S Person wrote:
    On Wed, 11 Jun 2025 14:32:26 -0500, "Michael F. Stemper"
    <michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 09/06/2025 19.06, Tony Nance wrote:

    The Time Machine - Wells

    This is the second classic Wells you've recently mentioned (the other one >>>> was _The War of the Worlds_), neither of which I've read. (I have seen the >>>> George Pal interpretations of both, of course.) I need to fix this.

    Yes. You do.


    Pal's version of /The Time Machine/ is -- awful. No, seriously, read
    the book and forget the film, if you can. (The main problem is that it
    is obsessed with Nuclear War which, of course, the book knows nothing
    of.)

    Nuclear war? Wells didn't even know about the Blitz when he wrote it, or >>even WWI.

    Despite which War in the Air had some on point critiques of Victory
    Through Air Power.

    Indeed it does.

    Airships they had. IIRC.
    --
    "Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
    Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
    Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jerry Brown@21:1/5 to psperson@old.netcom.invalid on Sat Jun 14 07:57:32 2025
    On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 08:38:40 -0700, Paul S Person
    <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

    On Thu, 12 Jun 2025 12:50:44 -0500, "Michael F. Stemper" ><michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:

    On 12/06/2025 10.24, Paul S Person wrote:
    On Wed, 11 Jun 2025 14:32:26 -0500, "Michael F. Stemper"
    <michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 09/06/2025 19.06, Tony Nance wrote:

    The Time Machine - Wells

    This is the second classic Wells you've recently mentioned (the other one >>>> was _The War of the Worlds_), neither of which I've read. (I have seen the >>>> George Pal interpretations of both, of course.) I need to fix this.

    Yes. You do.


    Pal's version of /The Time Machine/ is -- awful. No, seriously, read
    the book and forget the film, if you can. (The main problem is that it
    is obsessed with Nuclear War which, of course, the book knows nothing
    of.)

    Nuclear war? Wells didn't even know about the Blitz when he wrote it, or >>even WWI.

    Thanks for confirming my point.

    I didn't notice this when I saw it as a child, but the Eloi are lured
    into the Morloch domain /in the movie/ by the sound of an air raid
    siren and the opening of an air raid shelter's doors -- a siren we
    heard and a shelter we saw earlier in the film.

    The problem for me here isn't that they changed the book, the problem
    is that the changes are modern-day (well, "modern" when the film was
    made) concerns.

    Maltin, who likes the film, calls it a "cartoon version" of the book.

    The fallout shelter is just as valid an explanation, since the class
    struggle mentioned in the book is only the Time Traveller's theory
    which he explictly states as such (Baxter's authorised sequel did
    being the class war into canon though).

    The film added multiple stops so he got to witness this, as opposed to
    the book where he goes straight from his initial jump of a few minutes
    to 802,701, noting only that the buildings around him seemed to fall
    away at some point.

    --
    Jerry Brown

    A cat may look at a king
    (but probably won't bother)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Paul S Person@21:1/5 to rja.carnegie@gmail.com on Sat Jun 14 08:48:02 2025
    On Sat, 14 Jun 2025 13:34:42 +0100, Robert Carnegie
    <rja.carnegie@gmail.com> wrote:

    On 14/06/2025 07:57, Jerry Brown wrote:
    On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 08:38:40 -0700, Paul S Person
    <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

    On Thu, 12 Jun 2025 12:50:44 -0500, "Michael F. Stemper"
    <michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:

    On 12/06/2025 10.24, Paul S Person wrote:
    On Wed, 11 Jun 2025 14:32:26 -0500, "Michael F. Stemper"
    <michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 09/06/2025 19.06, Tony Nance wrote:

    The Time Machine - Wells

    This is the second classic Wells you've recently mentioned (the other one
    was _The War of the Worlds_), neither of which I've read. (I have seen the
    George Pal interpretations of both, of course.) I need to fix this. >>>>>
    Yes. You do.


    Pal's version of /The Time Machine/ is -- awful. No, seriously, read >>>>> the book and forget the film, if you can. (The main problem is that it >>>>> is obsessed with Nuclear War which, of course, the book knows nothing >>>>> of.)

    Nuclear war? Wells didn't even know about the Blitz when he wrote it, or >>>> even WWI.

    Thanks for confirming my point.

    I didn't notice this when I saw it as a child, but the Eloi are lured
    into the Morloch domain /in the movie/ by the sound of an air raid
    siren and the opening of an air raid shelter's doors -- a siren we
    heard and a shelter we saw earlier in the film.

    The problem for me here isn't that they changed the book, the problem
    is that the changes are modern-day (well, "modern" when the film was
    made) concerns.

    Maltin, who likes the film, calls it a "cartoon version" of the book.

    The fallout shelter is just as valid an explanation, since the class
    struggle mentioned in the book is only the Time Traveller's theory
    which he explictly states as such (Baxter's authorised sequel did
    being the class war into canon though).

    The film added multiple stops so he got to witness this, as opposed to
    the book where he goes straight from his initial jump of a few minutes
    to 802,701, noting only that the buildings around him seemed to fall
    away at some point.

    Indeed my vague recollection is that the 1950s
    film presents a 20th century War like the one in
    _Things to Come_, or indeed actual wars of the
    20th century. "Air raid" discipline of entering
    a shelter when the siren sounds could have become
    a permanent social arrangement, if the threat
    persisted. Though the year 802,701 is a very
    long time later.

    I'm fairly certain (it has been a while since I re-viewed [1] it) that
    it ends with a nuke. Which he does not stop to look at, of course,
    since if he had that would have been the end of the film.

    802,701 is indeed a very long time after the 1950s/1960s. That the
    situation began from something like Lang's /Metropolis/ seems much
    more likely.

    [1] IE, I watched as an adult something I had seen and enjoyed as a
    child many decades earlier. This worked with some films (/Journey to
    the Center of the Earth/, Gertrude and all, /The Lost World/, pink
    boots and all) and failed with others (Pal's /The Time Machine/,
    /Around the World in 80 Days/, one of the Dr. Goldfoot films). Tastes
    do change as you grow older. Particularly from childhood to
    ancientness.

    I expect that most of us here understand the
    difference from a fallout shelter, where you go
    in and stay there until the radioactivity outside
    wears off a bit. My point is you probably only
    do it once.

    I'm not sure what you are saying here. The difference between a
    fallout shelter and /what/? A bomb shelter as in London in the Blitz?

    All I am saying here is that it is /clearly/ the exact same shelter
    with the exact same siren that we see earlier in the film, in the
    1950s/1960s. Which might lead one to wonder what it was made of, to
    last to 802,701. Surely not rebar and concrete. And the siren?
    --
    "Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
    Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
    Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From The Horny Goat@21:1/5 to michael.stemper@gmail.com on Mon Jun 23 13:13:19 2025
    On Thu, 12 Jun 2025 12:50:44 -0500, "Michael F. Stemper" <michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:

    Pal's version of /The Time Machine/ is -- awful. No, seriously, read
    the book and forget the film, if you can. (The main problem is that it
    is obsessed with Nuclear War which, of course, the book knows nothing
    of.)

    Nuclear war? Wells didn't even know about the Blitz when he wrote it, or
    even WWI.

    Heck he didn't even know about aviation - the Time Machine was
    published in 1895, the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk in 1903. So
    far as I know, the interrupter gear (that allowed aircraft to fire
    straight ahead without tearing off their own propeller) wasn't
    invented until the first year of WW1.

    Wells would certainly have known about the Gatling gun since it had
    been invented during the US Civil War though Wells probably would have
    been more familiar with it due to its extensive use in the UK's Zulu
    wars which were late 1870s.

    He didn't write The Shape of Things to Come till 40 years later in the
    early 1930s.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From The Horny Goat@21:1/5 to michael.stemper@gmail.com on Mon Jun 23 13:17:18 2025
    On Sat, 14 Jun 2025 08:10:41 -0500, "Michael F. Stemper" <michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:

    On 13/06/2025 10.38, Paul S Person wrote:

    (On George Pal's film of _The Time Machine)

    The problem for me here isn't that they changed the book, the problem
    is that the changes are modern-day (well, "modern" when the film was
    made) concerns.

    Maltin, who likes the film, calls it a "cartoon version" of the book.

    He likes it and that's what he says about it? Wow! Talk about praising by >faint damns!

    It fits, though, because the _Classic Comics_ version of _The Time Machine_, >which was my first exposure to it, follows the film. (Assuming that a
    memory of sixty years back is accurate, anyway.)

    Your memory of the comics is better than mine - about the only one I
    remember was the Batman / Batgirl special where Batman is duking it
    out with the villain when suddenly Batgirl says "OOOOh - I've got a
    run in my stockings", the bad guy turns to look and Batman knocks him
    senseless with a blow to the side of the head.

    Probably some of my Batmans would be worth something if I still had
    them, ditto my baseball card collection from 1967 (I think) which
    included a mint Willie McCovey rookie card.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From The Horny Goat@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jul 20 00:38:15 2025
    On Mon, 23 Jun 2025 16:34:36 -0400, Tony Nance <tnusenet17@gmail.com>
    wrote:

    Probably some of my Batmans would be worth something if I still had
    them, ditto my baseball card collection from 1967 (I think) which
    included a mint Willie McCovey rookie card.

    Minor nitpick: McCovey won the NL Rookie of the Year in 1959.

    My main card collection year was 1967 which IIRC was the year the SL
    Cards won the Series.

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